On The Issues

Crime

[Excerpted from a speech delivered to the Southern Christian Ministries in Monroeville]

I’ve knocked on thousands of doors while running for public office, and there are certain issues that people are continually bringing up. But the one issue that keeps coming up, again and again, is crime. Many people are afraid to venture into the cities, even their own neighborhoods. This is unacceptable.

As a Libertarian governor, I would work to reduce the threat of crime. There are things that the governor can do unilaterally, without the consent or assistance of the Legislature to reduce crime, and I plan to inaugurate them on my first day in office.

The first thing is to eliminate parole for violent criminals.

It’s nothing short of insane to let violent criminals out of jail before their time has been served. Studies show that 5% of the criminals commit 95% of the crimes, so why are we setting these people free? It’s tough enough getting a conviction in our convoluted judicial system, so putting these people back on the streets is the last thing we want to do.

It’s a simple way to reduce crime: make violent criminals serve their entire sentence without parole. It makes you wonder why the two old parties haven’t already done it.

Eliminating parole for violent criminals would certainly help reduce illegal crime. But there are forms of legalized crimes which the governor can halt without the assistance of the Legislature, specifically, the legal crime called asset forfeiture.

As the law now stands, you can be found innocent in court, but even though no conviction occurs, you house, your car, your entire life savings can still be taken from you. This is nothing short of highway robbery.

Worse still, the forfeited assets are distributed to the counties in secret, unaudited accounts that end up who knows where?(For more detail, visit www.fear.org.)

Fortunately, Article 4, Section 9 of the Pennsylvania Constitution gives the governor the power to remit all forfeited assets, and unless there’s a conviction for a real crime, that’s just what I intend to do. When I become governor, legalized theft will cease.

By ending parole for violent criminals and ending asset forfeiture, the crime rate in Pennsylvania is guaranteed to go down. And the only way to make sure that happens is to vote Libertarian.